Windows Enterprise Desktop:

July, 2017

The free Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit, aka MAP or MAP Toolkit, is available to Windows professionals online. For organizations who've not yet succumbed to the allure of Windows 10, it's probably a good idea to...

The Windows Recovery Environment (aka Windows or RE or WinRE) is a valuable tool for system recovery. But on some PCs, the standard collection of device drivers packaged with Windows itself may not cover your needs. You'll know if this means you when you find you must add device drivers after...

Over the years, I've developed a drill to keep the trash on my Windows disks under control. For Windows 10, that involves an interesting mix of tools and utilities to get rid of unwanted and unneeded files. Forgive me in advance for dragging in lots of stuff. That said, a genuine periodic Win10...

In reading over TenForums this weekend, I came across a new potential source of disk space consumption in Windows. It turns out that NTFS can sometimes allocate lots of space for transactions. It uses a built-in facility called the Kernel Transaction Manager (KTM), along with the Common Log File...

From time to time, Microsoft Press offers free eBooks to interested readers for their download and use. Recently, Sales Director Eric Ligman posted a whopper of an offer. It appears in an MSDN blog entitled "0 CommentsRSS FeedEmail a friend

Mostly, the Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service works behind the scenes. This service coordinates among backup tools, applications in need of backup, and OS-provided storage management and hardware. Usually abbreviated VSS, this service enables creation and capture of shadow copies. Helpfully, 0 CommentsRSS FeedEmail a friend

I just got back from a 5-day family visit to northern Virginia on Monday evening. That meant the bulk of yesterday was spent catching up. That included dealing with the Patch Tuesday release of Cumulative Update KB4025342, and the latest Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT). By and large, things...

In days gone by, I've recommended using Piriforum CCleaner for post-upgrade cleanups on Windows 10. But no longer does the third-party tool beat the built-in Disk Cleanup utility. In fact, the latter is now as fast (or faster) than the former, and it gets rid of more stuff, too. That's why I must...

Disk cleanup is one Windows admin topic to which I return from time in this blog. Usually, that means jumping onto storage volumes and rooting out unwanted, unneeded, or unnecessary files and folders. Today, thanks to German programming whiz Uwe Sieber, I'm going to come at this from a different...